Beds are important furniture items used for sleeping. Beds include a mattress and an underlying support structure, such as a box spring or other support structure. Unlike other furniture items, beds require daily maintenance that includes dressing the mattress with bed linens, blankets, bedspreads and/or comforters.
Mattresses are bulky and heavy to lift. Handling these mattresses may strain a bed maker's body, resulting in back and neck fatigue, pain, injury, lost productivity and medical claims. This is especially true in the hospitality industry, hospitals or other industries where housekeepers routinely make or change tens or hundreds of beds in a single day.
When changing a bed, consumers typically lift and hold the mattress to apply a fitted linen over the four corners of the bed. When making or continuing to change the bed, a flat linen may be draped over the mattress and the flat linen is tucked in between the mattress and the underlying support structure. In order to tuck in the flat linen, a bed maker typically lifts the mattress away from the underlying support structure, holds the mattress in the elevated position, twists their body linen and tucks the linen between the mattress and the underlying support structure. This process requires strength. Repeating this process multiple mattresses in a single day requires strength and endurance. Without warning, lifting and/or holding mattresses in an elevated position may physically injure even the most careful bed makers.
The bed making process may be further complicated by physical limitations in the areas that are available for making the beds. For example, some mattresses may be located in restricted areas that limit physical access to the mattresses and prevent the use of safe lifting techniques. Other barriers to bed making may exist, such as the existence of structural impediments, including night stands, other furniture, foot boards, head boards, bed rails, slats, bed skirts or other structural impediments. While devices are available to assist bed makers in raising the mattresses while making beds, some of these devices are difficult to use, others are complex or still others are costly. The invention overcomes these and other drawbacks.